10 Strategies for How to Create Leaders for an Empowered Business

As a leader at your company, you also want to inspire other people to become leaders. Having more than one person as a source of authority, guidance, and support can create an empowered business. Allowing employees to move into leadership roles lets them know you have confidence in their abilities.Such an investment in your staff also projects to consumers the image that your business is a company of leaders. In order to reap these benefits, you should employ some strategies to stimulate your employees’ leadership skills.

1. Develop Leadership Positions

Some of your employees are likely natural-born leaders. Others have been working on their soft skills to get better at guiding their colleagues. However, if your company doesn’t currently offer leadership roles, their skills may stagnate.

In order to fully learn how to create leaders, you have to develop positions for employees to fill. Assessing your current leadership needs and looking for gaps in power and authority can help you to determine what positions to create. Once you do so, let employees know about these new opportunities. Afterwards, they will start working toward taking these opportunities.

2. Create Healthy Competition

Inspiring a divisive environment where employees care only about their own success is not one of the methods for how to create leaders. However, a professional business medium should nourish some level of competition. Without competition, employees are likely to feel content with their current roles.

For example, you may want to offer a bonus to employees who are willing to take a leadership role for an upcoming project. You can also provide additional work opportunities to people who consistently take on leadership roles.

3. Define Your Vision of a Leader

While you can start to employ some strategies to encourage employees to seek leadership roles, you should also define a vision of how to create leaders for your company. Depending upon the type of business you have, the most desirable skills for a leader could vary.

You may need leaders who aren’t afraid to communicate thoughts with outside parties. Under other circumstances, you need professionals who consistently come up with creative visions for projects. Once you have defined how to create leaders for your particular business, share this information with your employees. Let them know what it takes to be a leader at your company.

4. Infuse Role-Play into Workshops

Some employees likely lack the necessary confidence to be a leader. This issue may stem from the fact that they have never had leadership roles. Therefore, start testing them by using role-playing activities at the next workshop.

You can divide your employees into groups and assign each of them a role. You may be tempted to allow workers to self-select who will act as the leader. On the other hand, this strategy for how to create leaders does not encourage individuals to move outside of what is comfortable for them. Creating low-stakes scenarios where different employees can act as leaders may encourage them to pursue such opportunities that were not on their agenda.

5. Host Leadership Workshops

While some of your employees may be too shy to show off their leadership skills, others may be too confident. Confidence is important, but an abundance can cause havoc when you are trying to learn how to create leaders.

Developing workshops specifically based on leadership skills will likely draw in those employees who are interested in pursuing such opportunities. During the workshops, they can assess their strengths and weaknesses and learn how to improve in their areas of weakness.

6. Embrace Different Styles of Leadership

Even when you have defined a leader for your business and you have hosted seminars based on these definitions, you should keep room open in your mind for different approaches to solutions. For example, when you think of a leader, you may envision someone who aggressively handles problems as soon as they arise. To someone else, a proper leader may fully listen to what the opposition has to say before articulating his or her point.

Before criticizing someone’s version of leadership, consider if it has some perspective to offer. You should focus on uncovering the employee value proposition for each staff member. From here, find out how to position each worker to their own and your company’s benefit.

7. Supply Reading Material

When you are really dedicated to building a strong foundation of leadership, and you have employees who are serious about perfecting these skills, on-the-job training might not be enough. Offering reading material followed by discussion groups can allow employees to study when they are at home or on the go.

8. Pay for Classes or Programs

Depending on how serious you are about strengthening your company’s leadership skills and how much money you have to invest in the project, you may want to pay for employees to take classes. You can also consider offering them the means to enroll in programs outside of the business.

For example, you may offer to pay for a graduate degree for employees who are seeking a specific position within your company. If you have employees who are truly dedicated to the craft or leadership and who want to learn how to create leaders themselves, then you may have found workers who are seriously worth this investment.

9. Offer Guidance

When the time comes for employees to take on serious leadership roles in the business, you want to offer them guidance. In fact, you may pair them with a mentor for the first couple of days of the project. If that is not possible, you can provide a few training sessions before they take on the project themselves.

The first time acting as a leader for a major project can come with some fear and some errors. Nonetheless, one-on-one guidance can make the damage minimal.

10. Give Some Room

If you constantly hover over employees as they assume leadership positions, then you aren’t really allowing them to be leaders. While giving up control can be frightening, especially when the stakes are high, keep in mind that you had to learn to act as a leader at one point too. Having to deal with difficult situations alone or as the leader of a group can help employees to hone sharper skills for the future.

Final Word

To create more leaders in the company is to empower the company. When you have strong leaders, you can likely take on more important projects. These strategies can help your business to have more success in a competitive world.